Tag Archives: Intellectual History of Women

Ernestine Rose and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Sites, NYC, Part 3

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Jerome Ave Gate of Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

Sunday, November 2nd, 2014

This is my last day in NYC on my Ernestine and Elizabeth pilgrimage.

First, I head north on the number 4 train, to the last stop at Woodlawn. It takes me right across the street from the gate to Woodlawn Cemetery, at 517 E 233rd St, The Bronx, New York City, NY 10470, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton is buried.

It’s a cold, windy day, and I’m so glad I piled on all the wool clothes I brought with me; Californian that I am, I was overly optimistic about the weather when I packed for the trip, as I am wont to do. But the sky is a beautiful azure blue, and Woodlawn is a beautiful place, the fall leaves adding vibrancy to a scene of serene green lawns and gray marble. Elizabeth is buried here with her husband and other family.

From the Jerome Avenue gate, I walk down Central, with one beautiful view before me after another, after another…

A View at Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

A View at Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

Observatory and Central Sign at Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

A friendly man who works here had given me directions, and after I walk for a little while, he’s about to pass me in his little work car. He’s driving around the park grounds, clearing the drives and paths of the large branches that the strong winds were knocking off the trees. He pulls up and offers me a ride to a spot nearer Elizabeth’s grave, since he sees me apparently looking around and wondering if I’m going the right way. I accept his offer so I can hear any stories he might have to tell about the cemetery and those resting there. Instead, we chat a little about sports and the weather, between stops now and again to clear another branch, and about California, about which he has a lot of questions.

He drops me off near her final resting place between Observatory and Lake, a few plots east of Observatory, on the north side of the road.


Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Family Gravestones at Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City, Photo 2014 by Amy Cools

Stanton Family Monument, Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

As you can see in the photo above, the simple stone between Henry Brewster Stanton’s on the left (her husband) and Daniel Cady Stanton’s on the right (her son) is Elizabeth’s, with her initials and years of life etched on the top. Some of her story, of her seven children, and other descendants, is etched into the large monument:

As you can see, many of her female descendants felt free and inspired to pursue careers and interests that were closed to women on Elizabeth’s time, and were unusual even in theirs, decades later. Harriet Stanton Blatch, as told in my previous piece, carried on her mother’s work as a suffragette, as did her granddaughter, Nora Stanton Blatch, who became a civil engineer as well.

As I stand at Elizabeth’s grave, and call to mind all that she did to make my life and all the lives of my fellow women free and independent, I feel deeply moved.

Stanton Family Monument, Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

I am so, so grateful, and humbled by her boldness and bravery when she took such a stand against centuries of oppression of women, when few stood with her on that side of the struggle. Every woman, be she single, coupled, or married, professional or full-time homemaker, a mother or without children, have her to thank, because she did so much to make it possible for her to choose her own way, and to prevent men from forcing her to live according

to their whims and desires.

She did it all: she was a stay-at-home mother of a large brood of seven children for many years before she became a professional public speaker and author; she was a wife who pursued her own interests independently of her husband when her children were sufficiently grown, and had a vibrant and active single life after his death; she was an intellectual outside of academia; she was a fierce critic of religion who was a close ally of religious leaders so long as their beliefs supported the cause for women’s liberty.

Stanton Family Monument, Woodlawn Cemetery, NYC

Elizabeth, in short, was a powerhouse.

Then onto the last visit of my trip: the site of the original Church of the Puritans, where the ‘old Tiffany store’ stood, which I had missed on my second day of site-hunting. of 15th St and Broadway (download the PDF to see the 1911 New York Times article showing the original church and its location at the southeast corner).

There’s a series of bronze plaques embedded into the sidewalk around the perimeter of the park, with scenes of the park in its various phases. This one shows the southeast corner of Union Square, and if you compare the image of the central building portrayed in the plaque, the tallest one with the pointy tower on the left and the flat-top tower on the right, you can see it’s the same Church of the Puritans that would have stood there in 1866 convention, at the time of the convention.

Union Square Park, Showing View From 1850, New York

The southeast section of Union Square Park, near the George Washington Equestrian Statue and to the left if you’re heading southward, was built where the church stood; as you can see from the 1911 New York Times article and the plaques, Union Square Park changed in size and shape many times over its history.

As you may recall, the Church of the Puritans (it’s also referred to as Dr. Cheever’s church in many of the old sources) was the site of the eleventh Women’s Rights National Convention, where the American Equal Rights Association was formed, where Elizabeth discussed her plans to run as the first female candidate for Congress, and both Ernestine and Elizabeth were featured speakers. (See my previous piece for more of the story.)

In Union Park, NYC, facing south, photo 2014 Amy Cools

Union Square Park, NYC, facing south

Thus ends my voyage of discovery in New York City, and again, I’ve had the most marvelous time, and learned so much, following in the footsteps of some of my favorite thinkers. There really is something about visiting actual locations where these important things happened and these wonderful people went about their lives; it centers you, focuses you, in much the same way religious idols or artifacts inspire the believer and the archaeologist. But I’ll soon be returning to Ernestine and Elizabeth’s most important legacy: their ideas, and the story of their work on behalf of the liberation of all women and of all dispossessed and disenfranchised people. Until then….

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Sources and Inspiration:

“American Equal Rights Association (AERA)”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/19648/American-Equal-Rights-Association-AERA

Belden, E. Porter. New York, Past, Present, and Future: Comprising a History of the City of New York. New York, 1849. http://books.google.com/books/about/New_York_Past_Present_and_Future.html?id=Jv-nXd8W8b0C

The Church of the Puritans, Presbyterian: 130th Street, near 5th Ave, New York. Anonymous. 1889. https://archive.org/details/churchofpuritans00chur

‘Contrasts in New York City Development Strikingly Seen Around Union Square’. New York Times, May 21st 1911. (Download PDF to see full article)http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B0DEFDA1431E233A25752C2A9639C946096D6CF

Dorress-Worters, Paula. Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women’s Rights Leader. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2008

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (2014, November 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Ernestine Rose. (2014, July 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Find A Grave (website)  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=73495804

Freedman, Janet. ‘Ernestine Rose.’ Jewish Women’s Archive. 
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rose-ernestine“Harriot Stanton Blatch,” Biography.com (website) 2014

http://www.biography.com/people/harriot-stanton-blatch-9215141

‘Nora Stanton Blatch’. IEEE Global History Network (website) 
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Nora_Stanton_Blatch

Burns, Ken. Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Documentary film (1999, November 7). ” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_for_Ourselves_Alone”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_for_Ourselves_Alone
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Josyn Gage. History of Woman Suffrage, volumes 1 and 2. Rochester, N.Y., 1881 and 1887
https://archive.org/stream/historyofwomansu01stanuoft#page/n11/mode/2up

https://archive.org/stream/historyofwomansu02stanuoft#page/n5/mode/2upThe Woodlawn Cemetery (website) http://www.thewoodlawncemetery.org/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>http://www.thewoodlawncemetery.org/”>http://www.thewoodlawncemetery.org/

Ernestine Rose and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Sites, NYC, Part 2

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Central Stairway of the Metropolitan Opera House

Central Stairway of the Metropolitan Opera House

I commence my second day in New York City from mid-Manhattan, and work my way up.

I begin with the Metropolitan Opera House, where a grand celebration of the life and work of Elizabeth Cady Stanton was held on her eightieth birthday, November 12th, 1895, arranged by the National Council of Women and Susan B. Anthony, her fifty-year partner in the cause of women’s rights.

The Met is currently located at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, several blocks west of the south end of Central Park, between 62nd and 65th Streets and Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues.

As you can no doubt recognize from its decidedly mid-20th century style, this is not the original building, and as I later discover, not the site of the original one. With this series, as with my first on David Hume, I research sites to visit only briefly before I set out since I want these journeys to lead me to new and unexpected discoveries.

New York City's Metropolitan Opera House

New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House today

As I mention in the previous piece in this series, I learn about New York City’s penchant for tearing down and building anew in the course of this travel series. My sister Therese described it best, after reading my account of the first day: ‘Sounds like you went on the most fun scavenger hunt ever!’ That’s really what this series is intended to be, a hunt for the sense of the places and times of these heroes of thought that I admire, so I hope you don’t mind the twists and turns in the story as I occasionally discover myself at the wrong location the first time around.

Here’s the original Met where Elizabeth’s birthday celebration was held, at 39th and Broadway Streets:

Old Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, image public domain via Library of Congress

Old Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, image public domain via Library of Congress

On the first day of my trip, I pass by this spot, since I walk to the Lower East Side from Chelsea via Broadway, but I take no pictures of it since I only learn later that the Met had been relocated from its original site.

Elizabeth was deeply moved to be honored in such spectacular fashion during this event. In the early years of her activism, when she was obliged to stay home with her seven children, she was often frustrated that she was unable to be present in person as the women’s rights movements progressed and grew. She had worked closely with Susan B. Anthony through several decades, writing speeches, letters, and articles, and devising campaign tactics to introduce and pass legislation to expand the rights of women. While she was widely published and she wrote prodigiously on its behalf, she had often felt removed from the movement, a ‘caged lion’, as Susan would say. At this birthday celebration, however, Elizabeth could have no doubts any longer at the instrumental role she played, and the gratitude of countless women for the freedoms she had helped them win.

St. Anthony’s, once the Church of the Puritans, Harlem, NYC

Next, I go to Harlem, the northernmost of my destinations planned for the day, to work my way south since I want to end up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (for a lovely art-filled evening; though I inquire, I find no images or artifacts associated with Ernestine or Elizabeth at the Met).

This time, I’m seeking the Church of the Puritans, site of the first Women’s Rights convention after the Civil War in 1866, where both Elizabeth and Ernestine Rose were featured speakers, Elizabeth’s campaign as the first woman to run for Congress in 1866 was discussed (she received 24 votes!) , and the American Equal Rights Association was formed. The AERA would hold its first annual meeting the next year there in 1867. The AERA was formed in order to focus on a broader agenda: to seek expansion not only of women’s rights, but to equal rights ‘irrespective of race, color, or sex’.

The Church of the Puritans I visit is at 15 W. 130th St near 5th Ave, Harlem, a neo-Gothic style church that looks very like it originally did when it was built in the 1870’s…. what!?! I exclaim to myself, when I’m at the New York City Public Library the next morning, doing more research for this piece. The meeting was held in 1866, so it couldn’t be the same building! Sigghhh. That’s the second site in a row that I visit that day, it turns out, that wasn’t the original one.

Though I’m disappointed for a moment, I get over it pretty quickly. To begin with, I enjoyed my bus ride to Harlem, I’ve never been there before and I’m really enjoying learning more about New York City.

Secondly, I meet this really nice lady in front of the church (it’s now called St. Ambrose) who I approach out front, to see if I can take a look inside. She’s evidently waiting for a man to return who was doing some work there. I ask her if the church is open to the public, and she said yes, but only during services. She asks me if I live around there and I tell her, briefly, about the women’s rights movement history associated with the Church of the Puritans, its former name. She’s friendly, and we chat a bit; she invites me to come to church on Sunday and meet the minister. The church is pretty, is on a lovely street, and has an interesting history of its own.

Museum of the City of New York, photo 2014 by Amy Cools

Museum of the City of New York

Main stairway and light installation at the Museum of the City of New York

Then I head for the Museum of the City of New York, a small and lovely museum, with lovely natural light (even in its windowless areas, it’s beautifully lit) and nicely curated, well-proportioned galleries. It’s at 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St, nearer the north end of Central Park on the east side.

In 2009 the Museum of the City of New York recognized Ernestine Rose on its NYC400 list of those who have had the greatest impact and influence on the world’s greatest city.’ The MCNY also hosted a celebration of Ernestine’s life on April 27th, 2010, the most significant event I could find in recent years in New York City, for this woman who did so much in the cause of human rights, but has been so long mostly forgotten.

As I mention in a previous post in this series, it appears clear from my reading and research thus far that Ernestine was largely forgotten as a major figure in any of the various human’s rights causes she championed because she was such a controversial figure: not only were her campaigns and public speaking for women’s rights and abolition radical for the time, but her uncompromising egalitarianism and unapologetic atheism were practically unheard of. Though such giants in the feminist movement as Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who carried through the campaign Ernestine had begun to obtain property rights for women) to Susan B. Anthony (who traveled with Ernestine on speaking tours and kept a portrait of her on her wall) considered her work a primary inspiration for theirs, later feminists downplayed her legacy due to her controversial, very publicly aired beliefs. Elizabeth was among the few who admired and emulated Ernestine’s outspoken freethought and arguments for complete religious freedom, and was no doubt inspired by her when she herself, in her later years, offered a scathing critique of the Bible’s despicable passages about women.

Nothing of the Ernestine Rose exhibit remains, but there’s another wonderful one dedicated to New York City’s radical movements, from activism for immigrants’ and religious minorities’ rights (Quakers and Catholics were two religious groups especially persecuted in NYC’s early history) to women’s, ethnic minorities’, workers’, and cyclists’ rights. The women’s rights movement is also covered in this exhibit, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and especially her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch, are prominently featured.

Here are some photos of plaques and pictures from the exhibit telling the story of Elizabeth, her daughter Harriet, and the great feminists who carried on their work:

In the museum’s other New York City history exhibits and in my research the next day, I learn more about the city leaders and planners’ rebuilding projects, to make the city’s layout more orderly, its architecture more modern and state-of-the-art, but in the process, much of the city’s historical character was lost. One of the movements that the Activist New York exhibit covered was the efforts of people who fought to keep more of the city’s oldest, most beautiful, and most historically significant structures from being torn down.

The Stanton Building, New York City

From the MCNY, I head across Central Park (so beautiful in the fall!) in a south-westerly direction, to visit the last site of the day.

The building where Elizabeth Cady Stanton lived the last years of her life, and where she died, is also no longer standing. The Stanton is located at 250 W 94th St, New York, NY 10025, between West End Ave and Broadway, several blocks west of Central Park. The original building is gone, torn down and another built in its place shortly after she died, and the new building was named for her.

Her granddaughter, Nora Stanton Blatch, also lived here as a high school student and graduated as the first female civil engineer from Cornell University. No doubt, her grandmother would have been extra proud; both her daughter and her granddaughter carried on her legacy of breaking down barriers for women.

In addition to the building name itself, there’s an exhibit in the main lobby in tribute to Elizabeth, with photographs and some information about her life and work:

To be continued…

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Sources and Inspiration:

‘About Ernestine Rose‘. Ernestine Rose Society, Brandeis University (website)

Activist New York. Exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, Fall 2014.

‘American Equal Rights Association (AERA)‘. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014.

‘An Introduction to the Metropolitan Opera.’ (2012, July)  The Metropolitan Opera (website).

Belden, E. Porter. New York, Past, Present, and Future: Comprising a History of the City of New York. New York, 1849.

Burns, Ken. Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Documentary film (1999, November 7). Also listed on IMDB

The Church of the Puritans, Presbyterian: 130th Street, near 5th Ave, New York,  by Church of the Puritans (New York, N.Y.) Published 1889. Retrived from the New York Public Library digital collections

Dorress-Worters, Paula. Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women’s Rights Leader.  The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2008

‘EC’s 80th Birthday Celebration, 1895‘.(Updated 2010, August). The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers Project. (website).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (2014, November 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

‘Elizabeth Cady Stanton Dies At Her Home.’ On This Day, New York Times. Oct 7th, 1902

‘Ernestine Rose‘. (2014, July 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

‘The First Metropolitan Opera House‘ (2013, March 25) Topics in Chronicling America. Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, Library of Congress (website).

Freedman, Janet. ‘Ernestine Rose.’ Jewish Women’s Archive. 

Kolmerten, Carol. The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose. Syracuse, N.Y., 1999

Gaylor, Annie Laurie. ‘Ernestine L. Rose Lives!‘ Freedom From Religion Foundation website, 2010, April 9th.

Gordon, Ann. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: An Awful Hush, 1895 – 1906, Volume 6. Rutgers University Press, 2013.

‘New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission‘. (2014, October 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady.Eighty Years And More: Reminiscences 1815-1897. New York: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Josyn Gage. History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 1 and Volume 2. Rochester, N.Y., 1881 and 1887

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman’s Bible. New York, 1895

Ernestine Rose and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Sites, NYC, Part 1

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To start my journey, I set out from where I’m staying, in Manhattan near where Chelsea and Flatiron neighborhoods meet, bound for the Lower East Side. That’s where newly married Ernestine and William Rose made their first home in New York City, at 484 Grand St near Willett, near the Williamsburg Bridge. The house is no longer standing, nor are any other nearby buildings from their time, except for the synagogue behind where it probably stood.

In fact, as I visited places associated with their lives over the course of four days, I found not a single building still standing that I could be sure Ernestine or Elizabeth set foot in. As I was to learn more throughout the course of my trip, New York has systematically pulled down and rebuilt itself over and over again through the centuries, with its restless culture of self-reinvention, innovation, and progress, until a movement in the 1960’s arose and reminded New York that its history was important too. But that’s another (fascinating) story, which I’ll return to later.

Despite the lack of extant sites, seeking them out led to me to discover not only more about the lives and times of Ernestine Rose and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but more about how they influenced others, more about other people doing great work for the same or related causes, and more about New York City’s history. I also learned more about other movements, not only political and ideological but of people: migrations of those seeking better opportunities for themselves and their children when their homeland had less to offer. In visiting this first site, for example, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of fascinating parallels between the builders and inhabitants of the current structures, and the lives and philosophies of Ernestine and Elizabeth.

Henry Street Settlement and Playhouse, Lilian Wald Site, New York City, 2014 Amy Cools

The Abron Arts Center, adjacent to the Harry De Jur playhouse now stands near the probable original site of the Roses’ first New York home. The Center is one of the buildings that comprise the Henry Street Settlement, founded by Lillian Wald. She, like Ernestine Rose herself, was a human rights activist of Jewish descent. She was also a dedicated and tireless humanitarian: Henry Street Settlement provides health care and educational and recreational services for underserved communities.

In both Ernestine Rose and Lilian Wald’s days, the Lower East Side was crowded with immigrants who, lacking opportunities in their native countries, flocked to New York City’s factories to seek jobs and a chance at a better life. From the early 1800’s onwards, NYC was an industrial powerhouse, with many of its entrepreneurs and investors amassing great wealth, while the greater number suffered the worst effects of an industrial city before the age of  reform and regulation: overcrowding, disease, grinding poverty, and crime. Between the time Ernestine and Lilian arrived in the lower east side, conditions had become quite dire; Henry Street Settlement was founded as a solution to many of these social problems. No doubt, Ernestine, a radical egalitarian and human rights advocate, would have approved of the building that stood on the site of her old home, and of its founder’s mission.

(Note: in visiting another Ernestine Rose site the next day, coincidentally, I had the opportunity to learn more about H.S.S. and its founder, Lilian Wald. Stay tuned!)

Behind the Abron Arts Center and the probable site of the first Rose home, there’s also a synagogue and Jewish education center (the Daniel Potkorony Building). The Bialystoker Synagogue, built as a Christian church in 1826, predates the Rose’s moving there in 1837 by 11 years, so she would have been familiar with the building. Of course, I have no way of knowing one way or the other definitively, but since the Roses, especially Ernestine, were eempahically non-religious, it’s improbable that they would have visited the church much, unless it was the site of social events unrelated to worship.

Bialystoker Synagogue, coincidentally or not, was organized by Polish Jews in 1865, who purchased the former church as its new and permanent home. Ernestine was a Polish Jew by birth, and while she was quite open about the fact that she rejected the religion of her youth, she also very much identified with many aspects of her Jewish heritage. Her excellent education was, at least in large part, a result of her father’s being a rabbi and her consequent desire to learn ancient Hebrew, history, and the arts of theological and textual discussion. She also defended the Jewish community vigorously when they became the target of anti-Semitic attacks in the Boston Investigator newspaper (Dorress-Worters pp 42-44, 311-333). The synagogue also operated as a stop on the Underground Railroad; Ernestine was an ardent and committed abolitionist. Another coincidence, perhaps!

Right across the street, on the same side of Grand as the Rose house would have stood, and across Willett, stands the Cooperative Village. Built by trade unions, the Village and its sister establishments were designed to improve living conditions for its working class, lower income inhabitants by including gardens, sunlight in all apartments, attractive design, good views, and other amenities, as well as being reasonably priced and, best of all, democratically run, with each tenant getting an equal vote regardless of the property value of any given unit.

Rose was a dedicated Owenite, so I suspect she would have heartily approved of such an establishment. Robert Owen, her inspiration and mentor, was a social reformer who believed that shared goals in work, daily life and politics would ennoble the human mind and rid the human race of the hatred, violence and ignorance that results from the selfish pursuit of personal wealth. While Owen’s philosophy may appear, today, to be based on an overly optimistic unrealistic idealism (he believed that human nature was mostly or entirely good, and it was people’s surroundings which could support and inspire them in their good traits, or could cause them to fall into bad habits, become greedy or selfish, commit crimes, etc), he derived it from his personal experiences working in the horrific mill and factory conditions in mills in early Industrial England. (Observations of the miserable living and working conditions of industrial workers would later inspired Engels and Marx.) His New Lanark community was a resounding success for many years: its mill was profitable and its workers and their families comfortably housed and well fed, their children educated, and their surroundings, already in a lovely river valley, clean and beautified by gardens.

Despite my best efforts, I could find no plaque or anything else marking the site of the original Rose home. Yet, I felt I had found something better: in searching for the site, I learned that within just a few city blocks from that site, many others had lived and worked to accomplish the same excellent goals that Ernestine had pursued in her time there: the freedom of enslaved people, the improvement of the lives of working people, community-building for Polish Jews and other immigrant people.

Next, I head over towards Park Row and City Hall Park.

Frankfort Street no longer exists either. It’s located somewhere underneath or alongside the place where the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge now rests, across from Pace University. Ernestine and William Rose owned a perfume and silversmith / jewelry shop there, called ‘Fancy and Perfumery’. Their rooms over the shop was their second home in New York City.

William was an accomplished jewelry maker and fine-metal worker, and while Ernestine had supported herself for many years up to that time and her perfume inventions contributed significantly to the family income, he was happy to help finance her public speaking and human rights work over the next few decades.

Here’s where the Brooklyn Bridge ends, where Frankfort ends and Park Row begins. 9 Frankfort would have been near the intersection of those two streets.

The last site I visit today is 37 Park Row, where, on January 8, 1868, in a room on the fourth floor of 37 Park Row in downtown Manhattan, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton published the first issue of Revolution, a newspaper dedicated to advancing the cause of women’s suffrage, among other social reform issues. Although the newspaper survived in its original form for just slightly over two years, it helped gain public exposure for the women’s suffrage movement and for Anthony and Stanton, two of the movement’s most influential leaders.

Elizabeth and Susan established their own feminist newspaper, The Revolution, after the split in the women’s rights movement over the 15th Amendment, which extended the right to vote to men of all races while, for the first time, specifically excluding women as it used the word ‘male’. Because they felt betrayed by the majority of the men, and many of the women, in the movement for giving up the fight for universal suffrage so easily (as they saw it), Elizabeth and Susan felt that the movement must now be run exclusively by women, for women, in order to retain the revolutionary spirit and singleness of purpose necessary to accomplish their key goal. Every contributor to the paper was a woman, as well as every single employee of the paper.

37 Park Row also no longer exists; I write my search notes in the Starbucks at 38 Park Row, across from City Hall Park. The street sign on the corner of the park dedicated to these ladies is directly across the street, and since it’s the corresponding even number across, the sign probably stands near or at the actual site where the newspaper was published. Here’s an illustration from 1868, which shows the original buildings comprising Printing House Square, where so many of New York’s major periodicals were produced:

Thus ends my first day following in Ernestine and Elizabeth’s footsteps in New York City.

To be continued…

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Sources and Inspiration:

‘Bialystoker Synagogue: History’. http://www.bialystoker.org/history.htm

Brawarsky, Sandee. ‘Safe Havens on the Freedom Line.’ New York Times. January 19, 2001. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/19/arts/safe-havens-on-the-freedom-line.html

Burns, Ken. Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Documentary film (1999, November 7). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_for_Ourselves_Alone
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220253/

Cooperative Village: History. (website) http://coopvillage.coop/history.php

Dorress-Worters, Paula. Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women’s Rights Leader. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2008

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (2014, November 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton

 

‘Elizabeth Cady Stanton Dies At Her Home.’ On This Day, New York Times. Oct 7th, 1902.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1112.html

 

Ernestine Rose. (2014, July 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

 

Freedman, Janet. ‘Ernestine Rose.’ Jewish Women’s Archive. 

Henry Street Settlement, website. 

 

Kolmerten, Carol. The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose. Syracuse, N.Y., 1999. 

http://books.google.com/books?id=0JkRzTh7QUsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false


Lillian Wald. (2014, September 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Wald

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. (2014, October 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 
 
‘Robert Owen’ and ‘New Lanark: An Introduction’. Undiscovered Scotland: The Ultimate Online Guide. 
Scanlon, Breanne. ‘Revolution, the Feminist Periodical’. Place Matters.

 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Josyn Gage. History of Woman Suffrage, volumes 1 and 2. Rochester, N.Y., 1881 and 1887 

https://archive.org/stream/historyofwomansu01stanuoft#page/n11/mode/2up